Sexual-Harassment Claims Against a ‘She-E.O.’

'Miki Agrawal, the co-founder of Thinx — a company that makes “period underwear” — doesn’t think much of boundaries. “I just love the taboo space,” she told New York last year, of her mission to (profitably) destigmatize menstruation. And in a promotional video for the product, she said, “My favorite thing to talk about are the things you’re not supposed to talk about.” According to a complaint filed late last week by a former employee (and echoed in interviews with multiple current and former employees), those things have included: the size and shape of her employees’ breasts, an employee’s nipple piercings, her own sexual exploits, her desire to experiment with polyamory, her interest in entering a sexual relationship with one of her employees, and the exact means by which she was brought to female ejaculation. Her alleged boundary-breaking in the workplace isn’t just verbal. Per the detailed complaint, filed with the City of New York Commission on Human Rights, Agrawal also touched an employee’s breasts and asked her to expose them, routinely changed clothes in front of employees, and conducted meetings via videoconference while in bed, apparently unclothed. (She also is said in the filing to have shared nude photos of herself and others — “including but not limited to her fiancé” — with staff.) At least once, she supposedly FaceTimed into a meeting from the toilet.

The complaint, brought by Chelsea Leibow, the 26-year-old former head of public relations at the company — whose distinctive Thinx PR emails acquired some renown — also describes a culture of fear and a pattern of ageism, in which members of the mostly female, mostly 20-something staff were routinely referred to as “children,” with the few employees in their 30s tagged “nannies.” The filing — which also names the company’s COO and CFO, for their failure to address repeated complaints about Agrawal’s behavior — comes on the heels, just over a week ago, of Agrawal’s leaving from her post as CEO (as first reported in Jezebel) and the publication of an article in Racked that made clear that, despite the company’s feminist branding and mission, the women who worked there felt exploited by low pay and substandard benefits. The complaint notes that the only two employees who had evidently successfully negotiated higher salaries were men. Per Racked, 10 of the company’s 35 employees have left since January (a Thinx spokesperson says the number is lower but declined to specify); several others departed either voluntarily or were fired last year by Agrawal, whom staffers described as erratic, retaliatory, and extraordinarily difficult to work for.'

Comments

Comment viewing options

... around the behavior, or mis-behavior, of people in vaunted positions, being dependent largely on their sex is largely bullshit. Like the wage gap myth and 1-in-5 college sexual assault assertion, it's another myth that is hard to kill, pruncipally because demonizing men is a national sport.

The laws of all western cultures are heavily biased in favour of women. Rape and sexual assault laws were only changed in the late second half of the last century to include rape by females. Prior to that there was no law against female rapists, as it was considered that such a thing was impossible. Even todays laws continue this bias. Rape and harassment laws are gender neutral. But thats not how they are enforced or judged. At the gate of the legal process, police are free to prosecute or not, based on their understanding of events. In all cases of domestic violence, at first instance men are considered the aggressors (this has been the policy since the early 90s) and will be ordered to leave the family home and children (more recent). The law is clear and gender neutral about consent, if you are affected by alcohol, you may not have the capacity to give consent. If two people are drunk and have intercourse or sexual relations, both are incapable of giving consent to sex, but only men are prosecuted for rape in these situations.
Why? The law is embedded in its historical understanding of women as the weaker sex, likely to be easily influenced by men and incapable of sexual or other aggression. While this view of women is the antithesis of feminist empowerment of women, it is a convenient get out of jail free card, and is not challenged.
This view of women as weaker, easily influenced and less likely to be aggressors, extends to contract laws, employment laws and discrimination laws. All heavily weighted in favour of women.
So when this kind of crime is committed, the law, and the media, just haven't the tools to deal with it. Similarly, in the recent Royal Commission into sexual abuse of children by the church, a smaller, but still substantial number of children were abused by nuns. Bet you didn't hear much about that in the news!

New User Accounts

Due to problems with user accounts being used for spam, we require all new user account requests to be sent via email to newaccounts@mensactivism.org. Please let us know what username you would like in your email. Thanks for your patience while we look for a more permanent resolution to our spam problems.

User login

Follow Us on Twitter

Spread the word...

We encourage everyone to distribute the information found on our site, and we only ask that you help to spread the word about Mensactivism.org in the process: so please, say you saw it on Mensactivism.org!

Thank You!

- The Men's Activist News Network

"You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality." - Ayn Rand